Scientists Express Relief, Displeasure

Many Complained That The Restrictions Bush Imposed On Stem-cell Research Would Delay Cures.

August 10, 2001|By Rick Weiss, Washington Post

For a field of science as young as embryonic stem-cell research, where so much of the biomedical promise is still just that -- a lot of promise and very little proof -- President Bush's decision to permit even limited federal funding could mark the beginning of a major boon.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of the nation's biomedical researchers, the vast majority of whom are dependent on federal support, have been champing at the bit to experiment on the versatile cells. Retrieved from 5-day-old human embryos, stem cells can transform into every kind of tissue, providing a potentially endless source of replacement parts.

The allure of human embryonic stem cells is even greater than that. Written in the language of their DNA is the secret of how a single cell can grow into a fully formed baby -- molecular instructions that could shed light on a wide range of birth defects and, if harnessed by scientists, herald a new era of regenerative medicine.

With clinical applications still years and perhaps a decade or more away, even privately held companies that have so far had monopoly access to the cells have been lobbying Congress and the president to allow their federally funded competitors access to the cells.

So it was that scientists expressed a mixture of relief and disappointment Thursday night after Bush announced he would allow federal funding for research on a limited number of existing stem-cell colonies, or "lines," from embryos already discarded by fertility clinics.

Many complained that the restrictions imposed by Bush would hold back the field and delay the development of cures.

"These restrictions may well have implications for our ability to generate certain kinds of knowledge," said Mark Frankel, director of the scientific freedom, responsibility and law program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Most frustrating to scientists is the prospect under the Bush decision of having a limited array of embryo cells available for study. Stem cells are extremely finicky. All the colonies, or cell lines, that have been created so far enjoy a rather precarious existence, and could -- in the lingo of the lab -- "crash" at any time, disappearing into a shriveled gelatinous mass beyond hope of resuscitation.

But even if all the Bush-approved cell lines survive and produce progeny for years to come, scientists will still be working with a fraction of the resources they would like to have. By definition, stem cells have the capacity to turn into all 200-plus kinds of cells in the body, so in that regard even a single cell line can provide scientists with almost everything they could ask for. But there are subtle molecular differences between each cell line. Those variations can make large differences in how the cells behave and what they can teach researchers.

For example, of the six cell lines created so far by Geron Inc., the Menlo Park, Calif., biotech company that has funded most of the embryonic stem-cell work in this country, only two have been deemed sufficiently stable and useful to be distributed to stem-cell scientists around the world, the company's president recently reported at a scientific meeting.

Scientists also questioned Bush's assertion that there are about 60 cell lines available. Fewer than 10 have been reported in scientific journals, with perhaps another 10 described at scientific meetings.

By precluding any federal support for the creation of new stem-cell lines from discarded embryos, critics of the Bush policy said, entire realms of knowledge will go untapped.

"In general in science we learn more by looking at more examples," said Pamela J. Hines, a senior editor at Science magazine. "If we are restricted in our research to looking at only a fraction of the world, we will only gain a fraction of the knowledge of the world."

Bush also did not address how scientists will know if the cell lines they are interested in are "pre-approved" or not. It can be difficult to "fingerprint" cell lines in ways reliable enough to ensure their provenance. With cells being shipped through the mail from lab to lab, lineages could easily get mixed up.